Flooding in Texas 1997


	1997 SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS FLOODS


	The outflow from three flood gates at the Wirtz Dam during June 1997 flooding.

Texas suffered a drought in 1996 that had people praying for rain from Dallas to the Mexican border. Those prayers were answered with a vengeance in 1997. The rains began in May and saturated the ground. Heavy rain persisted through August. The resulting runoff turned almost every stream and river into violent white water.

Flooding hit almost all of the waterways that feed the Colorado River. Flood control reservoirs rose to record levels. And many houses and businesses built along the shores were completely destroyed. Much of the damage was uninsured.



A torrential rainfall upstream on Cypress Creek June 9, 1997 caused a wall of water that rearranged the parking around these river front condominiums.


	This truck’s owner found it roughly 1000 yards from where it was parked before the flood.


		This channel below the Wirtz Dam is normally only a couple hundred feet wide.



				Reporter Itza Gutierrez at the end of an 18-hour shift covering the Cypress Creek flood.


		The outflow from two and a half flood gates at Wirtz dam above Marble Falls.


	Flooding in the town of Llano on the Llano River.


	Photographer Julie Karam covering the Wimberley floods.


	Reporter and anchor Walt Maciborski stands on a flooded residential street in Graveyard Point on the shores of Lake Travis, just west of Austin.



		Morning anchor and reporter Tess Dumlao and chief photographer Lalo Garcia at the Starke Dam.